Google+ Users: 10 Million, Mostly Tech-Savvy Dudes

Google says I’m part of a small group of people in the limited field trial of Google+. Just how small exactly is the group?

Over 10 million users “small,” CEO Larry Page revealed in his first earnings call. Obviously proud of the achievement, he also mentioned user activity — over 1 billion items shared and received in a single day.

The word “received” in the last sentence is particularly important — unless you’re inclined to believe that every Google+ user shares about a hundred items a day on average.

While the search engine giant did not reveal any demographic information, statistics collected by websites like Find People on G+ and SocialStatistics.com indicate that Google+ is dominated by dudes, reporting 73.7 percent and 86.5 percent of male users respectively.

Questioning the accuracy of the data Paul Allen, a statistician, argues a more balanced gender ratio of 2:1 — that is, 66.4 percent male and 33. percent female as of July 14. Paul claims the data displayed by both the mentioned third-party sites are not obtained through random sampling, and therefore does not reflect the actual gender ratio on Google+.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of early adopters of Google+ are tech-savvy, with engineers and developers dominating the top 10 occupations list according to Find People on G+.

Ten million users may not be brag-worthy when compared to Facebook’s 750 million, but considering Google+ is still in an invitation-only phase that goes on and off faster than you can press the “F5” key, it’s safe to say that it will not be “Google Waved”.

On a related note, the Google +1 button had been widely adopted on websites and blogs. “Our +1 button is already all over the web. It’s being served 2.3 billion times a day,” Page wrote on Google+.

According to a report published by BrightEdge earlier this month, the Google +1 button can be found on 4.4 percent of the Web’s largest 10,000 websites, which makes more popular than Twitter’s button at 2.1 percent. However both are still trailing Facebook’s “like” button, which has 10.8 percent coverage.